The present invention relates generally to a power resistor with a free standing element. A free standing resistor has a resistor element formed of a material having sufficient thickness to be self supporting without the aid of a substrate. More particularly, but not exclusively, the present invention relates to maximizing the wattage rating of a power resistor. In addition, the present invention relates to spreading heat across the resistive element of a resistor to thereby improve performance.
In addition, the present invention relates to maximizing the wattage rating of a power resistor while minimizing the physical dimensions of the resistor. This challenge has been addressed for film resistor technologies where the resistive element is on a ceramic substrate that can be bonded to the metal tab of a power IC package without electrically shorting the resistive element to the metal tab. Such an approach does not address the metal strip type resistor that does not have an electrically insulative substrate that can go between the resistive element and the metal heat sink tab of the IC package providing electrical isolation of one from the other.
Not having a solution to this problem has denied the electronics industry the benefits of a metal strip resistor's ultra low ohmic values, pulse power handling, low TCR, low thermal EMF, load life stability and low TCR in a high power density IC type package.